Re: WashPost: Why do Americans still dislike atheists?

Note: The blog post below was sent to me by an agnostic friend. Like all atheistic agnostics I have met he belittles faith in God but at the same time asks us to believe ON FAITH any article he sends to me whether there is EVIDENCE OR NOT. Even the Washington Post lists it in its OPINION section. Opinions are not facts.

This is my response on the blog.               

Oh no. Here it comes again. (:-) 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-do-americans-still-dislike-atheists/2011/02/18/AFqgnwGF_story.html?wpisrc=emailtoafriend

[Note: This will make no sense to you unless you read the article above first.]


Number One Problem: Why do I have to believe this? First of all I see unjust attacks on Christians who may not be wise in what they say. Do I see Christians like Billy Graham, Franklin Graham, Charles Price, Brian Houston from Hillsong interviewed or mentioned?

Number Two Problem: Do I see any references or proof of the author's statements? Or am I to accept what they say on faith? Bold statements are made but I see no evidence presented.

Number Three Problem: Do the authors have a bias, reasonable or not? And do they recognize their bias?
If you look at what field they are considered "experts" in, it would tend to make you believe they have a bias against Christians especially the strawmen types that are easy to pick on.

Phrases like:"Is this knee-jerk dislike of atheists warranted? Not even close." are basically ad hominem attacks on Christians who perhaps may have made unwise statements but still it is an attack to say that something is a "knee-jerk reaction". Perhaps they just disagree with atheists. Not everyone that disagrees has knee-jerk reactions.

Is it possible the writing of the authors above could be another "knee-jerk reaction" because they are upset?
Bold statements like this are not accurate and no evidence is presented, just the author's opinions.


"These put-downs have had sticking power. Negative stereotypes of atheists are alive and well. Yet like all stereotypes, they aren't true"

Who says? Perhaps atheists are their own worst enemies.

If anything I would say that of all the atheists I have talked to mainly on the web, they all display an anger and mocking attitude toward Christians in particular and speak with glee when they feel they have scored a point against a Christian. Even Peter Hitchens, speaks about his brother in his book "Rage Against God" as being angry. I have seen it in a friend, Christoper H, and Richard Dawkins and the long-past Madelyn Murray Ohair who was the most bitter person I have ever seen!
I think this anger makes them say stupid things and they themselves as atheists are the cause of people being biased against them.

They also mention another myth: The myth that intelligence equals wisdom. It does not. On the IQ scale the characteristics of a genius and an idiot are very similar. 


The best example I know of this would be the brilliant Howard Hughes. He was "an American industrialist, aviator, engineer, film


producer, director, philanthropist, and was


one of the wealthiest people in the world." 


Despite all of his brilliance and intelligence he ended up with an obsessive-compulsive disorder and became a recluse.  

I know many unintellectual people who have great wisdom, and lead very successful lives of helping others. [Sorry I cannot quote a study right now to prove it BUT remember that as a teacher I have met a VERY large number of people and since I am 67, this last statement I have learned from the best teacher, experience.]

So do I believe what the authors of the above article say? No.

Do I wonder why my friend BC sent it to me? No. It is because HE accepts it on faith. I want evidence and seeing none, I have to discount it.

I have a lot of trouble trying to determine why Brian cannot see that HE has faith in atheistic articles and other tenets of his religion like man-made climate change, and therefore presents no evidence just opinions.


But on the other hand, I must ALWAYS prove my beliefs to him. Seems like a rather unfair way of discussion does it not? 

Have a good!


A cartoon for your thoughts!   


-c

On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 12:23 AM, <noreply@washingtonpost.com> wrote:

E-mail

This page was sent to you by: 

Message from sender: "My perception of "Reality.

Why do Americans still dislike atheists?

By Gregory Pauland Phil Zuckerman

Long after blacks and Jews have made great strides, and even as homosexuals gain respect, acceptance and new rights, there is still a group that lots of Americans just don't like much: atheists. Those who don't believe in God are widely considered to be immoral, wicked and angry. They can't join the Boy Scouts. Atheist soldiers are rated potentially deficient when they do not score as sufficiently "spiritual" in military psychological evaluations. Surveys find that most Americans refuse or are reluctant to marry or vote for nontheists; in other words, nonbelievers are one minority still commonly denied in practical terms the right to assume office despite the constitutional ban on religious tests.

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Former Dawkins Atheist Richard Morgan Continues to Praise God, Christian News, The Christian Post

Subject: Former Dawkins Atheist Richard Morgan Continues to Praise God, Christian News, The Christian Post

http://www.christianpost.com/news/former-dawkins-atheist-richard-morgan-continues-to-praise-god-49558/

Sometimes Sad to be Right

Comments I have received from neo-atheists have unfortunately confirmed my past experiences. 

They have these characteristics.

• Ignoring the main points and NOT answering questions posed.
• Flaming: Using belittling, mocking and rude remarks INSTEAD of answering questions. This technique is always used to avoid answering and to take attention off yourself and try to put it on the other person [in this case, me (:-)

My main points have always been ignored and given long verbacious responses which DO NOT answer the points.

The Questions that Atheists will NEVER answer clearly are as follows.

• What per cent of the world's knowledge do you have? When pinned down, which usually takes much work on my part, they will usually grudgingly agree that they have less than 1% of the world's knowledge with caveats galore like "but knowledge is accumulative....you have to count all the world's knowledge .... Such caveats MAKE NO SENSE since ALL KNOWLEDGE INCLUDES KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. So if atheists wish to include all knowledge they MUST admit that millions believe in God which rather makes being an atheist moot. [If atheists are people that believe there is no God.

Second question I have asked and never received a cognizant answer is...

• Could God exist in the 99% of the world's knowledge that YOU do not have. I have NEVER yet received a "YES". It is always a "NO" and usually a "NO" with circular reasoning that strikes one the same as the farmer being asked how to get to a particular place and he says, "You can't get there from here." We all know that is nonsense.

Since atheists WILL NOT answer these two simple questions, then it is IMPOSSIBLE to have a discussion with them because they will not stick to the point..

• As a Christian I cannot be so arrogant as to say "There is NO possibility that God does not exist." There is a possibility. Why cannot atheists admit there might be a God? 
• However the possibility of there not being a God is the same as the possibility as taking a watch apart and shaking all the parts up in a bag and wondering how long you have to shake before the watch creates itself by chance. What  are the chances of that happening?  

Then the second experience I get are emotional flaming remarks [not all flaming but written to belittle what I have said AND STILL HAVE NOT ANSWERED THE QUESTIONS  


Quotations from Comments received which did not aid in discussion

• it was the butt of a lot of humour as they saw through the flaws of the argument rather quickly. [Since "butts" are not my thing I did not bother to waste my time to go to the site mentioned however they still have not answered the questions!]
• a field full of strawmen in your reply.
• enough projection for a multiplex theatre
• only through censorship that religion survives [when the same atheist wants to prevent the conservative TV channel run by Sun News to be established in Canada. Is that hyprocrisy or what? I guess he means ONLY atheists are allowed to censor?]
• another rather hypocritical comment was "putting political pressure on candidates and boycotting companies that don't agree with ...' [Again I guess it is okay to boycott "Fox News North" , start a facebook protest, but ONLY if you are an atheist who of course is against censoring....??? One might ask why are ONLY atheists allowed to do the things they do? Is it because they deem themselves smarter than others?]
• I am still waiting a REASONED response to my questions above but I get "cannot survive the light of reason".
• "I have avoided no question" ... [except of course answering directly YES or NO to my two main ones!]

I deleted the last two comments sent to me because they were even worse. However I should have saved them as an example of what NOT to do.

My final question to any religious atheists is

• Do you know of anyone smarter than you? Someone who may understand more than you do? Take today's world for example. Or take all of recorded history if you wish.

But as a favour to the reader, who do you think made the comments below? Was he smart or just a blind believer? [No fair peaking until you read it all!!! ]

What religious figure made the following statements?

All are Quotations

• I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.
• 
  
• Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers
• 
  
• let us not forget that knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life
• 
  
• If men as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts, avoiding pain and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves, the result for them all taken together must be a state of insecurity, of fear, and of promiscuous misery.
• 
  
• If, besides that, they use their intelligence from an individualist, i.e., a selfish standpoint, building up their life on the illusion of a happy unattached existence, things will be hardly better.
• 
  
• In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human understanding, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views.
• 
  
• Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source.
• 
  
• There lies the weaknesss of positivists and professional atheists who are elated because they feel that they have not only successfully rid the world of gods but "bared the miracles." (That is, explained the miracles. - ed.)
• 
  
• I am also not a "Freethinker" in the usual sense of the word because I find that this is in the main an attitude nourished exclusively by an opposition against naive superstition. My feeling is insofar religious as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insuffiency of the human mind to understand deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as "laws of nature." It is this consciousness and humility I miss in the Freethinker mentality. 
• 
  
• I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. [There are some who say that this was not written by ,,,,,,,,,,,,,, but since the statements in it were made in other places by the same individual it does seem to fit with his concepts. It could be that the reporter took notes and then fleshed out what the interviewee had said. ]
• 
  
• Mere unbelief in a personal God is no philosophy at all.
• 
  
• I consider the Society of Friends [Quakers] the religious community which has the highest moral standards. As far as I know, they have never made evil compromises and are always guided by their conscience. In international life, especially, their influence seems to me very beneficial and effective.
• 
  
• In this sense I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves-such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine.
• 
  
• The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness.
• 
  
• In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is.
• 
  
• What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.
• 
  
• If one purges the Judaism of the Prophets and Christianity as Jesus taught it of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity.
• 
  
• Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth
• 
  
• No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot."
• 
  
• No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word
• 
  
• No man," he replied, "can deny the fact that Jesus existed, nor that his sayings are beautiful
• 
  

Are you interested in who said these things? Did you read what he said? Do you think he was a stupid man? 

If you would like to know who it is then please email me at cpedley@yahoo.ca with your guess or with your question as to who it is.

I promise I will NOT use your email address or sell it or give it to any other people but ONLY use it to communicate with you as long as you will allow it. If you tell me to I will then delete your address from my contact list.

-Charles

Impossibility of Atheism

To put it simply, I have NO respect for atheists! Why?

You may think it is because:

1. I am a believer
2. My brain is seized up
3. I am stupid
4. I am a conservative
5. I belong to the religious right [as opposed to the liberal left?]
6. I am an evangelical Christian. Therefore I cannot think.
7. I am not open-minded
8. I don't agree with your idea.
   

Some or all of the above may be true of me. However some are also true of atheists!

Why?

Would you agree that an atheist is a person who adamantly declares that there is no supreme being, no superior force, no God?

Now an agnostic, I believe is honest. What is wrong with saying, "I don't know if there is a God?" Nothing! It is your honest statement of your thought processes.

However an atheist believes in no absolutes except the absolute belief that there is no superior being. He cannot see a God; therefore there is no God.

I cannot see Rome but somehow I still think it is there!

I cannot see electricity and many have faced electrocution for that very reason!

Why is the atheistic position untenable?

I ask you, the reader, atheist or not, "What per cent of the world's knowledge do you have?"

• Do you have less than 10%?
• Less than 5%?
• Less than 1%?
• I am sure you would agree that anyone who says they have more than 1% of the world's knowledge has already declared oneself as a supreme being and therefore it is not possible to have discussion with that one!
  

Let us agree that anyone reading this has less than 1% of the knowledge available in the world. Okay?

Then there is 99% of the world's knowledge that we do not posssess? Isn't that logical straightforward math? 100% -1% = 99%.

So is it possible that God exists in the 99% of knowledge that you do not have?

Do you know what every atheist I have ever talked with or communicated with says? "No!" They say it is not possible that God exists in the 99% of the world's knowledge they do not have!

Isn't that a rather arrogant attitude. You do not have ANY knowledge in that 99%, but you declare with no hesitation that you KNOW no God can exist there!

That is the equivalent of saying, "I know NOTHING about Australia and have never been there but I KNOW that Sydney does NOT exist!" And those kangaroos? That's made up too!

That is why I have no respect for atheists. They claim superior knowledge to everyone else, especially those who DO believe in God. They have declared themselves to be the superior being because they KNOW there is no God and they KNOW there is no God in spite of the fact that they possess less than 1% of the world's information!

That is ridiculous! It is also not deserving of respect. Anyone who says that has closed his or her mind to logic.

It is impossible to declare that you know something about knowledge you do not have. But that is exactly what an atheist does.